“Anybody got a good joke?” Adjudication Boardmember Joe Tanaka asked the small crowd, assembled in the David K. Trask Building for the first Adjudication hearing of 2010. Nobody did.
The meeting was supposed to have started 10 minutes earlier, but, as Chairman Donald Fujii explained, only four members—Marilyn Colvin, Jerrybeth DeMello, Tanaka and Fujii —were present. Five are needed to make quorum.
As the minutes ticked by—15, 20, 25—people started to get restless, especially the representatives from the offending establishments—Juca Mexican Restaurant and Paragon Sailing Charters—who had made their way to Wailuku on a rainy Thursday morning to be admonished for their sins and slapped with a fine or, possibly, worse.
“I know you all took time off to be here,” said Fujii, almost managing to sound apologetic. “We took time off too,” he quickly added, leaving the impression that we were all somehow in the same boat, that everyone in the room was, in equal measure, giving selflessly of their time to further the greater good.
Finally, at 9:28am, nearly a half-hour after the meeting was scheduled to begin, the magical fifth boardmember, Bill Kinaka, entered the room, explaining that he had to be in court (when he isn’t listening to the details of minor decoy stings, Kinaka’s a lawyer). And so disaster was averted, and another LC year commenced.
The only downside? We never got to hear that joke. – MauiTime, Jacob Shafer
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